The wife is organized and the husband disorganized. Or it could be the other way around. This is a common example of many marriages in which life becomes complicated because of the husband’s inability to adapt to his wife’s excessive neatness and organization or the wife’s inability to adapt to her husband’s careless attitude about where he hangs his clothes or puts his personal effects. John Gray, the author of “Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus,” says that if either partner in the relationship is disorganized, it is not fair for them to be asked to change their habits. The organized person in the relationship must realize that this is part of their personality and must cease the endless criticism and blame. It is very important for the organized person not to take it personally if their partner is careless about matters such as orderliness and tidiness and both have to realize that it is difficult to make a grown person change their habits. The organized person must look for alternatives — do the work themselves or find a way to urge their partner to make an effort to change their behavior. They can be asked to help clean the house so that they will see how much effort it takes to keep it clean and tidy, thus making it harder for them to waste all that effort.
John Gray advises married people to stop playing the blame game. The organized wife keeps blaming her husband for his carelessness and never tires of criticizing him. This may drive the husband to stop listening to her and wallow in carelessness and disorganization as rebellion against a controlling wife.
John Gray adds that the wife must stop blaming and use a better way of communicating with her husband. For example, she should let things go and not provoke her husband — by doing so she is building a successful foundation that brings about positive dialogue and in turn leads to some kind of understanding. John Gray ends by confirming that the couple should give their relationship priority, after which they can take the necessary steps to satisfy each other.
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Are You Ready for Love?
Very few people find love at the right time and many leave it too late. In some cases, love may find us but we fail to feel it or are unworthy of it. Yet once we become more perceptive and mature, we find ourselves in the autumn of our years without ever having tasted true love.
The Italian novel “Too Late” is a unique one; its events are about love letters written by 17 men to 17 women. In the opening lines, the author draws our attention to the similarities between the women in the story, each of whom is looking for a life filled with love and happiness and trying to escape bitter realities by urging men to take a chance on love. The seventeen men are linked by a search for love that always ends badly — either with separation or death. Love doesn’t come at the right time, and if it does, then circumstances prevent its realization. The author is not concerned that most of these letters won’t find their way to their rightful owners — he is more interested in the events and characters in each letter and the outpouring of feelings brimming with love in the midst of a harsh reality. The author’s point of view centers on the difficulty men and women have in coming to an understanding because the protagonists refuse to face reality.
- Arab News Features 29 August 2003
